


Fall

by Sylv



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylv/pseuds/Sylv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was falling apart. Chipped nails and split ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall

She was falling apart. Chipped nails and split ends. He had seen her false eyelashes peeling off as she cried, and he had watched the glitter run as sweat poured and he had seen the way she slumped after she was finished.

Fluttering lashes and cold grasping hands…

_He wanted—_

Blood ran in the streets and sometimes he would hop over it and see his reflection.

– _Pant, pant, jump—_

_Coward!_  It screamed. He ignored it as he went.

"I—" Her breath hitched and he stopped breathing and watched as her thin chest—

(Too thin, he sees, too thin.)

It rose up and down shallowly, and she blinked rapidly while she rolled over. She was wearing a bra, but a bra only. Sheets wrapped around her body as she tossed and turned, but he did not help her. Cold hands, cold hands,  _always cold._

The tears were salty, and he realized that he was tasting them with his fingers. Just his fingers. They were searching, warm on her cheeks. Her breath ghosted shallowly across them as he wiped and traced and tasted.

In her sleep she cries, and…and  _she wants—_

But now is not the time, now has never been the time, it is always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. She has told him this as she brings the candles and they sit on the rotten floorboards and watch them flicker and burn because it is one of her wishes and he always abides by her wishes.

Snap, goes the incense as they each hold one. Snap, it says to them.

Snap, they reply, and suddenly they are holding two halves instead of a whole and she will start crying and say to him, "That is what it is like, that is what I know, now." And he believes her, but he won't tell her that because then he would be…that would be…well, he's not a coward.

Crying is hard. She will tell him that, tomorrow morning while they search for her shirt, the one with the forest on it.  _It hurts my eyes._  She will tell him this, and he will not know how to answer because he never does know how to answer her observations, because they had always been that—always been observations—and they did not affect him.

But right now, it's only—he only—and tomorrow again they will go out dancing.

Hairspray, she says. I need more hairspray. It won't stay up unless I use hairspray.

It is familiar, it is casual and he knows this routine. It looks better down, he tells her, and she laughs and shrugs him away.

"What do you know?" she asks, smiling, and shoves him lightly in the arm.

"Nothing, apparently," he answers, and that is her cue to kiss him on the cheek. But it's more than that, it's so much more, because when she looks at him, when she sees him, it's through him, it's another him, and he isn't sure what he is supposed to do other than take her in his arms and hold her.

Hairspray, she reminds him with a laugh as he lets go, and he will sigh and follow her into the store where it  _isn't_  just hairspray, it's the body glitter and the eyelashes and the makeup. And he will go back and sit with her on the floorboards and drag something else out, this time a tiny remote. "This is what you've bought today," he tells her.

Then he secludes himself and makes phone calls and she sits on the bed in her bra and underwear and stares at the photo album that she will not allow him to be rid of.

She grasps at his chest and he sucks in a breath at the cold, because it's always  _so cold_ , but what can they do? She is still sleeping while she does this and he tilts his head to the side. How many times has he stayed up late watched her sleep—

(Her ribs, her legs, the red hair that splays across the pillow, the bruised and swollen lips that she will not allow peace, she will not.)

Eating. She scoffs at it, unless he forces it into her mouth. Food. She asks why there is such a thing when it would be kinder to just…but she never finishes it because he is never listening to her when she says that, as her too small waist is appetizing and her tan has not disappeared over the years.

One day he will bring home a sweater. It will not be her birthday, and she will not know why he does it. When she asks all he will reply with is, "Green. Like your eyes." And she will put it on and get a candle, but this time it's a green one, one they have only ever used once. It burns like evergreens.

"Green," she will whisper. "Like my eyes."

More blood, but this time on a car.  _Coward!_  his conscience screams. He ignores it again, because he can do nothing else. Cold, hard, unforgiving guns and crinkled dollar bills. Payment in dark alleyways, but it doesn't matter, he would have been blind anyways.

She knows. Sometimes he wants and sometimes he wishes, but she is above him and sometimes she reaches down and grabs his hand and pulls him up, but only sometimes. So he falls through those rotten floorboards…

( _"Can we ever fix these? I feel like we're going to collapse onto the floor below."_

" _I promised you I would. When have I ever broken a promise to you?"_ )

But not only is he unreliable, he is a liar, and…and she refuses to allow him to pay bills even for the heat in the middle of the winter, because, because—

The gloves are gone. They shouldn't be, but they are she knows that it's him, she knows it, like she knows everything else.

You promised,  _you promised_ —

"He never would have done that!"

"I never promised to take his place."

Stuffy silences and rejection. There is only one bed, and since she isn't heartless they sleep together. She has a candle burning on the table and it soothes her. He tosses and turns, gets up earlier only to set the papers on the table on fire.

"Too lose is to be lost," is the wisdom that she imparts. She gets like that when she is relaxed, and he has just given her shoulders a massage, so she is comfortable and open. This is the time he decides to tell her, this is the time when he decides to say:

"I'm a hired hitman."

"To kill or to be killed."

"It pays well."

"I believe you."

Approval rating is zero, but how else do they buy the hairspray?

_The first night she came to him—_

_(But not really, because they were in contact somehow, always.)_

_She's crying, and she tells him, "He's gone." No words to say, because words aren't appropriate. "Where do I go?" she asks him, and he has no reply. He wants to take advantage of her. He wants to use her. He wants to have a knife and threaten her until she is too terrified to move._

_(But her eyes are green and her hair is red and her skin is tan and damn, she's pretty when she cries.)_

" _Inside," is what he said that night, and it was a mistake._

_But they are used to mistakes._

His cache is hidden behind clothes and boxes in the closet because he can find no other place to keep it. Money is low and the gadgets are running out. How much longer will the powder be accepted? How much longer will they buy the equipment, the various X's from him? Stashes are being depleted and still he carries his gun.

I don't feel comfortable with you having a gun, she told him when she first stayed there, as soon as she knew that he had one.

His response was to go out and buy her one of her own, and since then she has been able to shoot the alarm clock across the street through both open windows.

"Villainy is wrong," was another one.

"Necessities must be taken care of." It is his excuse because on the inside it  _hurts_  and he doesn't know how to express that to her, so he invites her into bed and they pass the time intertwining their limbs and heating up her cold, cold hands.

Running has never helped either of them, though, and when she appears through the bars of the cell she whispers, "That's the mask gone." He understands, but when he is let out and they go (home, he reminds himself, home) he yells and she yells and they go to a party.

He ran first, but she ran farther.

"He was always playing with my hair, at the end," she said, and he takes care to do this because it is what she wants, although he can tell that when she closes her eyes and sighs she is not feeling his hands there. They are tainted with the blood and they soak into her head and—she screams and screams at night, and he knows what she is screaming about.

Help comes in the form of daybreak and payment, and is taken away just as quickly, although they go out to a restaurant together. Normalcy is boring, though, and why should he want normal when he has raves and a beautiful girl who refuses to eat waiting for him?

She had bought the candles after being with him for a while. It's Tamaran all over again, she had said, and she had laughed and he had laughed and life had been great.

But the first time that he had found her using them she had been hysterical. "I—he never, and I never, and  _she_ —there were too many—how—how—how were we supposed to—to…" and she couldn't breathe and he had to lie on top of her, supporting himself on his forearms and just let it in…out…in…out…

There are now too many wax stains on his floor. But he isn't going to clean them, and neither is she.

(Together? Together. But whole? No, never whole…)

The moon on her back is pretty, gorgeous, gleaming, and he drags his fingers up across it, because she has rolled over again. The tears are gone, but he has left the eyelashes, the glitter; he has left what remained.

They smoked together. Her lungs were better than his and she inhaled and breathed it out her nose, like a pro. He coughed and hacked and his eyes watered so badly that he couldn't see her in front of him. He had wanted to try it again, but she refused, even though it had been easy, so simple—

_Like slitting someone's throat, or ambushing a defenseless civilian._

"He would not have liked that we did this." And that was that, because what she wanted was what she wanted.

"Cheers," he told her, and threw the pack into the street.

It was hard for her. It was hard for him too. Introducing her to the lifestyle that he lived was difficult, but she took to it like a natural; it was to take her mind off of  _him_  for the most part. But no matter how badly her heart was broken she was still gorgeous, and they still slept in the same bed every night.

(Photo albums are for memories.)

She will wear the green sweater and sit on the floor in a pair of worn jeans. He will sit with her and a white candle will be burning. A small one. One that they have never used before. And this time, the first use of a candle will not bring tears to her eyes.

"Memories are to be shared, aren't they?"

She will smile and he will find that he agrees.

They will waste away an afternoon. He will ask questions. She will answer them. He will scoff, she will laugh and they will cuddle, and something will be repaired.

And then it will be broken.

_(Dirty, rusty knives and an entire group of people after him. Running, running, running, but even speed won't save him now. Yells, screams, and blood running everywhere. Dragging, panting, huffing breath—but they are not cowards—into his own house. His own bathtub._

_She is the one who will find him. She will shriek and call 9-1-1 and beg of him that he doesn't die, because he can't, and she never…she still didn't…)_

She will almost kill herself. The gun that he gave her to protect herself will almost be used in a way that he never intended.

He will never be aware of this, because when he wakes up in the hospital with stitches down his sides and on his head she will be there and she will be crying and smiling and he will remember that she had someone once.

Once, but not anymore.

"I thought…I thought that you were going to leave me…like him…" she will whisper, and he will wonder how a team of superheroes could have gone so wrong. Her red hair tickling his mouth will interrupt that thought, though, and it will not fully formulate before he realizes that he should be wiping away her tears, her tears that fall on his cheek.

Right now, however, he does not know any of that, sitting in their bed and watching her sleep, the moonlight painting an unsung picture on her skin. He does not realize how many tears she will shed because of him, and she does not realize that he is watching her, away in her dreams as she is.

Her heart beats too fast for someone who is sleeping. Her eyelashes flutter, the fake ones coming off even more. Her hands are still too cold—far too cold—but maybe they will remedy that somewhere in the future.

He resolves that he will force some soup down her throat the next morning. He tries not to think about how she is falling apart, and he is not given the option of thinking about how far she really will fall. He makes himself comfortable on the far side of the bed and closes his eyes.

He is planning an attack as he falls asleep. She rolls over once more, but meets his back and stays there, drawn to the warmth. The candle burns itself out on the table beside them. She dreams of  _him_ , as usual, and he dreams of nothing.

Their breathing becomes synchronized, but it is not on purpose. Nothing is ever—

In the morning she will be making breakfast of leftovers, still in her bra, and he will wake up to the smell of her cooking. But she will shed no tears over days gone by, and he will not feel the urge to wonder whether or not she really sees him right then.

They will be allowed to bask in that moment, for a time. For a time.


End file.
